1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that analyzes a print job and automatically determines whether to output an image in a color mode or a black-and-white mode.
2. Related Art
In a case where an image forming apparatus compliant with both color printing and black-and-white printing executes a print job and prints an image, it is necessary to determine whether to execute the print job in either a color print mode or a black-and-white print mode. Determination of the print mode can be made, for example, by a user who designates the print mode as one of print settings when a print job is generated by a printer driver.
In order to enable a user to designate the color mode or the black-and-white mode as the print mode, the user needs to properly know the contents of an image to be printed. However, for example, when an image where only one of all pages is partly colored is to be printed, it is not always true that the user knows there is a color part.
On the other hand, if determination of the color mode or the black-and-white mode as the print mode by a user is substantially premised on that the user properly knows every detail of contents of an image, mental and physical load on the user is increased.
In this connection, for example, Patent Literature 1 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2013-120401) and Patent Literature 2 (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2015-122696) propose a technique that whether to cause an image forming apparatus to execute a print job in a color print mode or a black-and-white print mode is automatically determined on the basis of analysis of image data.
Patent Literature 1 proposes a technique that either a printer driver or an image forming apparatus generates image data (thumbnail image data) for displaying a thumbnail image of an image to be printed based on a print job described in a page description language (PDL) such as a PDF (Portable Document Format) or a PostScript (PS, registered trademark, the same applies hereinafter), analyzes pixel information of the thumbnail image data, and determines whether to designate a color mode or a black-and-white mode as the print mode. In this case, the printer driver corresponds to an output source of the print job and the image forming apparatus corresponds to an input destination of the print job.
Patent Literature 2 proposes a technique that when image data for printing is generated by performing raster image processing on a print job described in a PDL, whether to print an image in a color mode or a black-and-white mode is automatically determined for each page according to the degree of color pixels in the image data of each page.